BLOWN FIFTEEN FEET.
“The bow went clean down, and I caught the pile of chairs as I was washed up against the rail. Then came the explosions and blew me fifteen feet.
“After the water had filled the forward compartments the ones at the stern could not save her. They did delay the ship’s going down. If it wasn’t for the compartments hardly any one could have got away.
“The water was too cold for me to swim and I was hardly more than one hundred feet away when the ship went down. The suction was not what one would expect and only rocked the water around me. I was picked up after two hours. I have done with the sea.”
Whiteman was one of those who heard the ship’s string band playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee” a few moments before she went down.
R. Norris Williams, a Philadelphia youth on his way home from England to take the Harvard entrance examinations, was one of the few saloon passengers at the rail excluded by the women-first order from the boats who was saved. His father, Duane Williams, was lost.
“There is much, and yet there is little, to tell of my experience,” said young Williams. “My father and I had about given up our hope for life and were standing together, resolved to jump together and keep together if we could, so long as either of us lived. I had on my fur coat.
“The forward end, where we stood, was sinking rapidly, and before we could jump together the water washed my father over. Then, with the explosions, the ship seemed to break in two, and the forward end bounded up again for an instant. I leaped, but with dozens in the water between us my father was lost to me.